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A Gift for Sophie {Music & Book Review + Giveaway}

A poetic story by Gilles Vigneault about friendship and old age that takes place in a seaside setting and depicts a sense of continuity, the importance of remembering and the happiness a gift can bring. Nine songs accompany the narration of this touching story about two friends, Sophie and Emilio, and the Old Man Tom who teaches them how to see the world through their hearts. In addition to the narrated story, the CD offers nine heartwarming songs for the whole family.

Sugar Mountain recently released “A Gift for Sophie”, a book and CD combo which is a tale friendship as well as a story about cherishing the memories of those ever quickly passing moments of life. After falling in love with their last offering ” Listen to Birds: An Introduction to Classical Music”, I was quite eager to get my hands on this one. I’m pleased very much to say that my expectations were met with this timeless tale.

What really drew me into this book is the illustrations that are subtle yet very interesting to the eye. The detail is minimal but the illustrations leave you to discover much on each turning page. The story takes place at coastal town and having lived a coastal town myself, I feel the illustrations captures this location beautifully.

As the story starts, we meet Sophie, a seven year old little girl whom with her friend Emilio learns to appreciate the close bond formed between family and friends and seeing the world through their hearts. I liked that in the story the children are very much like my own, collecting treasures, asking questions, and going on their own little adventures.

The Children often meet with the character Old Man Tom whom is full of such insight and wise advice. The children in the book over the span of the story learn about how to solve the problems they may come across in life becoming more confident individuals. It’s been a lovely read and listen for my 5 1/2 year old daughter. She’s been pondering life a lot lately and she’s been learning by asking questions and listening to stories with strong messages. This book is a wonderful tale to share and I would very much recommend it.

On the CD there are ten tracks. The first track is a reading of the entire story and the tracks to follow are songs from the perspective of each character. It features performances by Martha Wainwright, Thomas Hellman, Jessica Vigneault and Paul Campagne. The music is calm, catchy, and is a perfect fit. My daughter enjoys listening to the CD and often asks for me to play it for her before bed at night. I would say we have quite the winner in the book/cd combination of Sophie’s Gift.